Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room J. G. Ballard Dead

Report is just in that J. G. Ballard died today (April 19) at age 78 of prostate cancer.

Oh God, no. A great man.

That is tragic news. Hope Garry finds out before he reads about it here. He's going to be in for such a shock.

Just read it at a dutch newsweb.
Been reading Empire Of The Sun lately.
Hope there will be more books of him in the near future that are going to be translated in dutch.
But that's the way it goes: chances are bigger now he's no longer among the living.

Here's a link to a local news report.

JF credits him as a major influence, especially during his early Metamatic years.

Another great gone.

John will be sad, as his work has been such a major influence throughout his career. He talked about his love of Ballard at Leeds last year.

Here is the announcement on the Ballardian site.

http://www.ballardian.com/

Very sad news. A great modern thinker and writer.

Some great stuff on the offical Ballardian youtube channel Ballardotube btw even tho the BBC interviews are 'no longer available'. Perhaps they will be again soon.

I found out late yesterday evening as friends rang me to tell me the news. It wasn’t that much of a shock - Ballard had announced that he had pancreatic cancer at the end of his last book Miracle of Life – a book that was essentially Ballard ‘putting everything in order’ before passing.

It’s hard to really say what Ballard meant to me as an author right now, but Simon Sellars, a visitor to this very forum says it all on his Ballardian.com site;

Ballard articulates clearly to me the implications of living in an age of total consumerism, of blanket surveillance, of enslavement designed as mass entertainment. But he also speaks to me of resistance through irony, immersion, ambivalence, imagination -- of remixing, recycling, remaking, remodelling.

Our guide to the theatre that is the 21st Century has left its stage. Thankfully, the survival manuals he left us with are intact.

Goodbye JG – you’ll be sorely missed.

Garry

To quote from Multiverse.org

He'll be sadly missed. He is probably more responsible for informing my world view than any other author. Thanks Jim.